The “Psycho” Morrison sectarian sleaze cult (PMSSC) attack on the Liberal Party continues:
…the growing anger suggests the factional tensions in the Liberal Party’s most powerful state are teetering on open conflict. Before it even begins battling Anthony Albanese’s ascendant Labor, the NSW Liberal Party urgently needs to resolve the war with itself.
So why would Hawke – and Morrison – refuse to complete the candidate confirmation process, potentially jeopardising the party’s chances at such a crucial state?
Critics among the moderates and hard-right offer the same answer: factional and personal power.
…Hawke wants the division declared officially dysfunctional. That would allow the party’s federal executive to take over, effectively appointing an administrator – someone approved and therefore controlled by the federal leader or, in reality, his lieutenant. It would give Hawke the effective power to personally choose and install candidates for the next two years, through the coming federal election, the run-up to the next one, and the state election in between.
…“Alex is the great uniter of the Liberal Party,” one NSW Liberal says. “He brings people together in common hatred.”
But if this is the plan, it faces one big obstacle: it appears the federal executive is disinclined to do it.
…Asking federal executive members to intervene is risky. Agreement could spark even more opposition among party members in NSW and possible cause outrage more widely. Refusal means publicly rebuffing their own prime minister on the eve of an election.
The Saturday Paper understands there is not currently a big enough majority to support an intervention motion. So Hawke – and Morrison – are stuck.
…a longstanding senior Liberal told The Saturday Paper it was time for the prime minister to stop obstructing the plebiscites and allow candidates to be chosen properly and fast.
“I think that is an unwise course for the prime minister to follow,” the Liberal said of federal intervention. “And I hope he will see the sense of that.”
Sense is not what the PMSSC does. As described many times before, its attempt to people the LNP with similar fruitcakes is a mission from god. No damned mortal must get in the way.
That was not the end of the PMSSC bloodletting:
Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has “unreservedly apologised” to Scott Morrison after a text message he sent last year – describing the Prime Minister as a “hypocrite and a liar” – was leaked.
The Weekend Australian can reveal the Nationals leader contacted Mr Morrison on Thursday morning after the text message he sent as a backbencher in March last year began “circulating among third parties”.
The text message was sent to a third person who then sent it on to former Liberal Party staffer Brittany Higgins.
…“He is a hypocrite and a liar from my observations and that is over a long time,” Mr Joyce wrote.
“I have never trusted him and I dislike how he earnestly rearranges the truth to a lie.”
Amusingly, Barnaby Joyce spent the rest of the weekend “rearranging the truth”, apologising, offering his resignation and quitting media appointments.
Which didn’t do much for the PMSSC after Karen Andrews appeared wearing silver beer goggles and gave us the Freudian slip:
The Barnaby leak apparently came from interests near Brittany Higgins. Do not underestimate the drip-feed of this stuff lined up for the next three months. Brittany and Grace Tame are doing a powderkeg duet at the Press Club Wednesday this week. The female power block of Australia’s political economy is coming for the “Psycho” Morrison’s sectarian sleaze cult that has failed them so horribly.
Then there is the ongoing “psycho” text drama, stirred to life again by Bob Carr:
The minister who shared the text with van Onselen and gave permission to use it was Peter Dutton. If PM Morrison has one more week in free fall the prospect of a leadership change pre-election is real. Party rules don’t count if most MPs think you will lead them to defeat.
— Bob Carr (@bobjcarr) February 6, 2022
Dutton issued furious denials this morning.
Meanwhile, the PMSSC war on basic freedoms and rights – the forgotten tenets of…ahem…liberals – also continues to blow up spectacularly:
Before the end of the last school year, the principal of Brisbane’s Citipointe Christian College, Brian Mulheran, brought his teaching staff together and asked them to pray.
Multiple teachers recall how Mulheran ran a PowerPoint presentation that listed the key elements of the federal government’s proposed religious freedom bill. As he went through them in turn, he led staff in a prayer that each measure would be enacted in 2022.
Citipointe college and its principal jumped the gun this week, attempting to force families to sign enrolment contracts that contained anti-gay and anti-trans provisions that lawyers say likely breached Queensland’s existing anti-discrimination laws. Mulheran initially framed it as “a legitimate exercise in religious freedom” but by the end of the week, the attempt to enforce the contracts – and some say momentum for the government’s religious freedom laws – had collapsed.
In the process, what has become increasingly clear is the extent to which Citipointe – both the Pentecostal megachurch and its school – has promoted conservative political activism alongside what it preaches.
A Guardian Australia investigation has discovered extensive links to the Liberal National party, including church figures who are significant LNP donors; attempts by churchgoers to infiltrate party branches; and overt political campaigning by the church’s leadership.
Nobody outside of the PMSSC wants it:
A Liberal Party backlash is likely to widen a federal government split over a draft law to enshrine religious freedom, with backbencher Bridget Archer saying she is ready to cross the floor against the bill.
The government is struggling to gain a consensus among the Liberals and Nationals after putting the contentious bill on the agenda for Parliament this week, fuelling calls from some MPs for the issue to be shelved because there can be no agreement.
If the LNP doesn’t exorcise these demons it will become unelectable. Exhibit A: today.
And, oh, that’s right, Australia is still in a pandemic! The weekend news tracking the latest round of PMSSC health policy failures and corruption was nothing short of appalling:
The centrepiece of the federal government’s “Living with Covid” program is a call centre outsourced to former robo-debt collectors and staffed by workers on casual contracts with no medical experience.
A cache of documents and testimony obtained by The Saturday Paper reveals the inner workings of the National Coronavirus Helpline, which is being run by private-equity owned Probe Group and its subsidiaries on contracts worth more than $270 million.
This information hotline has now been asked to triage people who have tested positive for Covid-19, or who believe they are infected, as part of the Commonwealth’s pivot to managing the disease in the community.
In practice, it has outsourced a key front-line health service to a small battalion of low-paid, poorly trained workers on insecure contracts. People staffing the hotline do not have medical qualifications. Many were previously unemployed and subject to the welfare system’s “mutual obligations”, which threatens penalties and payment suspensions if they refuse reasonable offers of work.
Training offered to new Probe recruits lasts only two hours.
Accounts obtained by The Saturday Paper show workers have described being placed under extreme stress while managing an overwhelming variety of callers, with limited information or ability to actually help them.
For instance, the coronavirus helpline is listed as the No. 1 point of contact on almost every government department, including Home Affairs and for disability and Aboriginal health services, despite there being no specific resources for team members to even provide advice.
I have rung this line on multiple occasions and every time discovered myself to be better informed than the telephonist. In short, I’ve had to instruct them. This goes directly to the abject failure of the entire LNP model of government as expertise has been outsourced, bastardised, corrupted and responsibility destroyed.
Yet, as useful as all of these stories are in underlining the catastrophic failure of PMSSC to govern effectively, what matters immeasurably more is where serial policy errors land upon actual Australians.
On that front, we move from the politically outrageous to the openly criminal. Bernard Keane at Crikey has done a marvelous job of keeping us abreast of it:
A taskforce? A fucking taskforce?
That’s the response from Scott Morrison and Health Minister Greg Hunt to the unfolding disaster that’s killing hundreds of seniors, has locked down tens of thousands and has left the sector with only enough staff for 75% of the shifts required.
The plea from the sector for the Australian Defence Force to be sent in to help offset the staff shortages that have left many isolated residents without basic services continues to be ignored. At least Defence Minister Peter Dutton signalled this morning that it could happen — undermining the prime minister’s rejection of the idea two weeks ago.
…Such a pointless reaction to most policy challenges would be laughable. In this case, as the death toll mounts in our nursing homes, it’s sickening and enraging.
And increasingly it looks like a wilful negligence that speaks of a decision to let people regarded as expendable die — after all, Hunt and Morrison have insisted this week, most of them were going to die anyway.
Why are Morrison and Hunt unwilling to do anything significant about the aged care disaster? Surely even the political cost would be enough to force a government obsessed with appearances to take action?
In fact there’s a horrific political calculation — one that most politicians understand — at the heart of their refusal.
…This is the horrible maths: at the moment there are about 240,000 Australian aged care residents. They’re not evenly distributed, of course, but for argument’s sake assume that the households they’re from are distributed across Australia — that’s across 150 electorates. That’s about 1600 households in each electorate.
More than half of those already don’t vote for the Coalition, and are unlikely to shift. The number of Liberal-voting households affected by aged care issues is probably about 700. So maybe 1400 people might be in a position to change their vote in anger at what they’re seeing. Then factor in nearly half of them are in seats already held by Labor.
533 dead this year as of Saturday. How many were avoidable if staffing had been augmented by the ADF? The sector has itself begged for just that for three weeks. Instead, the help has been held back for political gain, while the PMSSC goes to the cricket.
As everything that the PMSSC touches instantly erupts in angry puswads, even the conservative press is calling for the white coats:
In the investment markets, when insiders start selling, the professionals will tell you it is time to get out.
In Australia, when News Corp starts sliding away from a Coalition government, is that a political sell signal?
…The new perception was demonstrated at the National Press Club in Canberra on Tuesday in the questions put to the Prime Minister.
From the Nine Network’s Chris Uhlmann – a man undaunted by social media trolls – to cocky ABC correspondent Andrew Probyn, the tone was almost universally hostile.
One of those present described the mood as: “Let’s get him. It had that feel about it.”
Commentator Peter van Onselen during his questioning of Prime Minister Scott Morrison at the National Press Club on Tuesday. Alex Ellinghausen
News Corp journalists were the most aggressive. Sky News’ Andrew Clennell asked Morrison if he had “lost touch with ordinary Australians”.
It’s more than that. The PMSSC was never ‘in touch’. It was a putsch of frauds and fruitcakes. Now ambushed by the real needs of the nation.
Take “Psycho” Morrison away!
